The C.e.o. & The Cookie Queen

“I don’t see Puff,” Jenny said as Carole rang the door bell.

“He’s probably in the shade of those cottonwood trees by the stock tank, or maybe inside the barn.”

“I hope Mr. Rafferty knows how to take care of him. Puff isn’t used to being outside all day. His coat will just fry in this sun.”

Carole smiled, glad that her daughter was thinking about her former steer’s welfare rather than his imminent trip to the meat packer’s. “You can tell Mr. Rafferty what he needs to know. I doubt he knows anything about cattle other than what he learned yesterday at the arena.”

There was no answer to her summons, so she rang the bell again, folded her hands across her chest and tried not to concentrate on all of his faults, much less wishing him a miserable stay in Texas. Thinking such thoughts wasn’t exactly the charitable thing to do for a Sunday visit.

“Maybe he’s outside with Puff,” Jenny speculated.

“Okay. Let’s walk around back and see.”

The drone of the air-conditioning unit kept Carole from hearing anything that would give away Rafferty’s location. They walked toward the small barn that had been vacant a long time. The former owners hadn’t run any cattle or horses on their small ranch since their kids had outgrown 4-H.

“Puff!” Jenny called out, looking over the fence to the dark interior of the barn.

A dusky shadow moved, then slowly materialized into the large shape of Jenny’s steer—or her former steer, Carole corrected herself. She held her breath, wondering if Rafferty was also in the barn, until she realized what she was doing. She resisted the urge to call out to the man, to find out where he was lurking. With a disgusted sigh, she looked around the pasture, finding no trace of him.

“Do you want to stay and see Puff? I’m going back to the house to find Mr. Rafferty.”

“I’ll stay in the barn, Mom.” Jenny unlatched the gate and hurried toward the steer.

“Don’t wander off,” Carole warned as she walked toward the house.

The sun beat down on her back and shoulders, reminding her that she hadn’t worn a hat. And why was that? Because she wanted to look less like a cowgirl and more like a woman. A twenty-eight-year-old mother, a single head of her household, who had no business worrying about how she looked to visit a man who no doubt wanted her to dress up in an old-fashioned ruffled apron, display a plate of cookies and smile for the cameras.

But a little bit of doubt remained about her motives. Far back in her mind, she wondered if she’d dressed in soft, worn, body-hugging jeans and fitted, Western-cut shirt to make Greg Rafferty’s gaze roam over her the way he’d done yesterday at the arena. Could she possibly enjoy enticing his interest when she didn’t like him as a person? Surely she wasn’t that shallow.

She nearly stumbled over an exposed rock when she realized that she was exactly that superficial. With no conscious awareness, she was soliciting the interest of a man who was here to coax her into doing something she didn’t want to do, who would go to endless trouble and expense to impress her from a professional standpoint. Why, he was probably acting interested in her as another coercion tactic!

By the time she arrived back at the house, she was flushed from more than the heat. Something about Greg Rafferty rubbed her the wrong way. She’d never had this reaction to another man. In the past ten years, not once had she been even slightly tempted by the wrong kind of guy. Eleven years ago, as flighty as a green-broke filly…now that was a different story.

Carole pushed open the gate on the side of the house, grateful for the slight shade under the roof overhang. As soon as she turned the corner into the backyard, however, she was back in the sunlight again. She blinked, then squinted, then stared. Standing beside the pool, dressed in what could only be described as a scrap of black fabric stretched across an incredible male butt, stood the best-looking man her imagination could have dreamed up.

He must have heard her enter the yard because he turned, giving her a different view. His backside wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that scrap of a swimsuit struggled to cover. She sucked in a deep breath through her mouth, then started coughing.

Rafferty advanced on her until she put up a hand to stop him. If he got too close, she wasn’t real sure what she’d do. His lean, muscular body glistened with drops of water that slid from his wide shoulders to his smooth chest, then down his stomach, racing toward the low band of black fabric. She had the insane urge to taste those drops of water before they made their final destination.

After all, she was awfully thirsty.

She closed her eyes, thankful that she’d stopped coughing, hoping she could control these wild, out-of-character urges that had suddenly taken over her psyche. She wasn’t a loose woman. She wasn’t desperate. But she had been celibate for most of her adult life. Maybe there was something to those articles about hormones kicking in when a woman approached thirty.

“Are you all right?”

Without opening her eyes, she could tell he was close. Too close. Water-drop-licking close. “I’m fine,” she managed to whisper. Directing her gaze about six feet off the ground, she opened her eyes.

“I thought I was going to have to pound you on the back,” he said in an amused tone. “Or maybe give you the Heimlich maneuver.”

“I’ll take my chances on choking.”

Rafferty laughed. “You still don’t trust me.”

I don’t trust myself, she wanted to say, but kept silent. She found the idea of him locking his arms around her from behind, pressing that damp, hard body against her as his hands put pressure right below her breasts, way too tempting.

“You surprised me,” she said, trying to explain why she’d gone loco at the sight of him. “I rang the bell earlier, but no one answered.”

“I like to swim.”

Which meant he spent lots of time in such abbreviated attire. Or, if he had his own pool, maybe none at all. “Really?” Carole swallowed again, this time more successfully.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, his gaze taking in her shirt and jeans. She felt extremely overdressed, considering his state, but then reminded herself that she certainly didn’t need to be wearing any less around Greg Rafferty. He’s all wrong for you, she warned herself, even as she stopped her wayward eyes and thoughts from drifting southward.

“I’m glad you came to see me, but I am rather surprised. You weren’t thrilled that I bought your daughter’s steer.”

“My daughter? Yes, my daughter! She’s in the barn. That’s why we came to see you. Both of us. Because she wanted to make sure you knew how to take care of Puff.”

“Both of you,” he repeated, sounding disappointed. He ran a hand through his thick, wet hair.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I’d better go check on her.” She tore her gaze away from his face and turned around, ready to hurry back to the barn. Ready to drive her pickup down that gravel road as if the devil himself was chasing her.

The devil in a black Speedo.

His hand stopped her, clamped around her upper arm gently but firmly. She felt the dampness through her suddenly thin cotton shirt and shivered. “Wait a minute. Let me get a towel and I’ll go with you.”

So much for making a hasty retreat. “You need more than a towel,” she said before thinking.

He let go of her arm, then shrugged when she looked at him. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Apparently not,” Carole murmured, cursing herself for giving him another once-over with her wickedly independent eyes. Why couldn’t her body obey her firm resolve not to pay the least amount of attention to this totally unsuitable man?

“Are you shocked by what I’m wearing, Ms. Carole?” Rafferty asked in a teasing tone.

“You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest and looking over the high fence toward the barn. Not that she could see anything.

She wasn’t about to tell him that she hadn’t seen anything exactly like he displayed. If the rest of him was as good as—Don’t go there, she warned herself. Stop thinking about him that way!

“I’ll bet you don’t have a lot of cowboys running around in competitive swimwear,” he said with a chuckle. “I assume the community is a little more conservative than that.”

“You’ve got that right,” Carole agreed, still not looking at him. “We tend to be a bit more modest.”

“So you think I’m an exhibitionist for swimming in my own pool?”

“I didn’t call you names.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said, his voice coming from very close beside her. She couldn’t resist looking.

“Is this better?” He held his arms out, revealing a partially buttoned cotton shirt and a yellow towel wrapped around his waist.